Sightseers Review
UK 2012
Director: Ben Wheatley
Certificate 15 88m
Ben Wheatley makes unsettling
films. The slick sadism at work in 2011’s Kill List shocked and bewildered
audiences when it shed all guises and revealed itself not to be the kitchen-sink gangster flick, but all-out horror, eerily reminiscent of creeping paranoid thrillers like The Wicker Man. In Sightseers, Wheatley tells a story just
as sadistic and with just as much suburban paranoia of the country and just as
much unflinching violence too, only this time it is very funny.
Tina (Lowe) is a 34 year
old who finds Chris (Oram) coming between her and beige homelife with Mom when he
proposes to take her caravanning in the West Midlands. It is clear that Tina is
not on amicable terms with her mother, and a lot of past guilt (for the death of a
beloved pet) is thrust her way as she is swept off her feet by Chris’ not
all-that-honourable beardy advances. However, Chris’ rugged worldliness and promises of
the Pencil Museum, The Tram Museum and the Yorkshire Downs get the better of
Tina and she tears herself away from Mom, grabs her knitting, some
pot-pourri and jumps into the car with Chris as they tow his caravan into the wilderness.
Their first day is of course,
disastrous. Chris is distracted from enjoying their visit to the vintage tram
museum by a littering oaf, and Tina finds herself wrought with guilt when Mom
calls from home, feigning distress and illness. All these worries are dwarfed,
however, when their caravan runs into, over and some way through an
unfortunate, not entirely undeserving, passer-by.
As the couple trek across
Yorkshire, more seemingly accidental tragedies occur, as pagan rituals, omens
of past wrongdoings, and perpetual boredom play on their minds. Tina's doubts grow and she begins
to fear how far she will go to stay with Chris, as his fierce affection for the
country is revealed. She is, however, adamant, that their moral slips not ‘ruin
the holiday’.
So far, so spoiler-free (I appreciate how awkward the
synopsis is there but it’s hard to review this film without giving too much
away. There are plenty of surprises too good to spoil here).
The film is both very funny and disquieting. Never does the comedy come
for free though; with each fatal blow to their unsuspecting victims, Tina and Chris
pay with fissures in their relationship, morality and sanity, and we are made to feel the full force of these consequences.
It does not begin with obvious
laughs either, but with a tableau of Tina, modestly dressed in straight
unfitting jeans and a plain black sweater reaching out to her mother for
understanding, who is in a muted malaise at the prospect of losing her
daughter, who she is only too quick to remind, remains her only company. The
fact that the comedy has such realistic and honest undertones makes it all the
more unsettling and hence curiously British. The home-grown feel stems not just from
the imagery of caravan sites and the suffocating overcast weather, but Tina’s
attitude that is desperate to make the best out of a terrible situation.
Alice Lowe plays Tina with a
knowing yet honest detachment. She emits the sort of naïve steadfastness of someone struggling
to do the right thing. I’ve long been a fan of Lowe's television appearances since her brilliant
performance of Dr Liz Asher in Garth
Marenghi’s Darkplace and am delighted when she pops up on comedy shows such
as The Mighty Boosh, Snuff Box and This
is Jinsy. With Sightseers she
proves not just to have formidable skills as a comic performer but also those of an accomplished dramatic actor. That Tina unsettles, moves us, and get the biggest laughs is remarkable. The film's parched wit keeps it on the outskirts of believability too. The layers of authenticity and melancholy in Tina make the horrific tragedy all
the more disquieting and frankly believable.
Steve Oram (who also wrote the
screenplay along with Lowe and Amy Jump) plays Chris’s frankness remarkably
cautiously. There is something distant not just about Tina's, but our relationship with him too; Oram’s briskness keeps the barrier up. Their relationship is not perfect, and nor are
their social or financial circumstances. Chris works as a sort of one-man mob authority on all
injustices from class war to naive city-dwellers' preaching of National Trust guidelines,
bringing, as he sees it, balance to the universe through perverse but
‘necessary’ methods. The uneasy truth, however, is we begin to justify the ends their victims meet and along with Alice struggle to find a way out.
Through the laughs, violence and crumbling central relationship, the film manages to sustain another unsuspecting character, the countryside. Its eerily beautiful quality is credited in strong part to cinematographer Laurie Rose, who shot Wheatley’s last two features, and in a somewhat suburban allergic reaction, almost causes things go downhill. That their spirits are linked to the
surroundings is a curious genre device, one that crosses the comedy into horror, and something that is quintessentially Wheatley. In lesser hands, pillow shots of creeping fog on the
Yorkshire downs or hail battering the surrounding scenery would
come off as cynical or clunky. However, Wheatley manages to infuse them with
meaning to the spirit of the characters with brio. It’s a testament to the
producers, who include the formidably successful Nira Park, that such personal
touches of Wheatley’s remain.
It is the film’s grounding in
reality and the mundane, then, which why it works as well as it does. It knows where to tow the line between tragedy, horror and comedy, fearlessly dancing between without
hesitation. When we are not being battered with laughs in grossed-out dismay we
are trundling eerily into Chris and Tina’s psyche, and the film becomes something that carries pathos. Don’t be fooled by
the colourful poster, this isn’t an easy ride.
Nationwide from November 30th
